MIOKO SAITO

Mioko Saito is a Programme Specialist in the Training and Education Programme Unit and leads the assessment processes as well as gender mainstreaming of teaching/learning materials.

She is an expert in both quantitative and qualitative methods for educational research, in particular in the area of quality of education and gender equality in learning achievement.

She is responsible for the capacity building programme for educational planners in order to conduct qualitative research study to find out the reasons for gender differences in student achievement. At the IIEP she is responsible for courses on “Methodology for projects”, “Quantitative methods for monitoring and evaluating the quality of education”, and “Monitoring and evaluating the gender equality in education”.

She also provides technical support on the conduct of a large-scale educational policy research, especially in the areas of sampling technique, instrument design, field manual development, data validation, data archiving, measurement issues, and linking the research evidence with educational policy and planning, for several of the regional networks, including SACMEQ (Southern Africa Consortium for Monitoring the Quality of Education), PASEC (Programme for the Analysis of Education Systems), NEQMAP (Network on Education Quality Monitoring in the Asia-Pacific), and SEAMEO-PLM (Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization Primary Learning Metric).

She has also worked in the areas of higher education management, secondary education, and life-long education at the IIEP before commencing the work on the quality of education.

Before joining IIEP in 1992, she served as an Associate Expert in the Science and Technology Education Section at the UNESCO Headquarters. Before joining UNESCO, she was responsible for courses including 'instructional design and development', 'visual literacy' and 'educational media production' at the University of Oklahoma, USA.

Education

PhD in the field of Educational Psychology with emphasis on Educational Technology from the University of Oklahoma in the USA, 1990

Publications

Saito, M. (forthcoming). To flush or not to flush – Monitoring and evaluating the primary school sanitary facilities against Ministries’ benchmark standards in Southern and Eastern African countries. Chapter in Toilets and gender: Case studies in African schools. Paris: IIEP-UNESCO.

Saito, M. 2013. The classroom gender dynamics on the quality of learning at primary schools in Southern and Eastern Africa. Paper presented at the 57th Annual Conference of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) (March 2013).

Saito, M. 2012. Measuring gender sensitivity in educational environment and curriculum areas: Results based on the trends in gender equality in learning achievement in Southern and Eastern Africa. Paper presented at the 56th Annual Conference of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) (April 2012).

Saito, M. 2011. Trends in the magnitude and direction of gender differences in learning outcomes. SACMEQ Working Paper #4.

Saito, M. 2011. Trends in gender equality in learning achievement in Southern and Eastern Africa: Exploration of characteristics of educational environment and curriculum areas. Paper presented at the IIEP Policy Forum on Gender Equality in Education (Paris, 3-4 October 2011).

Saito, M. and van Cappelle, F. 2010. Chapter 1: Monitoring the quality of education: Exploration of concept, methodology, and the link between research and policy (pp. 3-34). In A. W. Wiseman (Ed.) The impact of international achievement studies on national education policymaking. International perspectives on education and society, V. 13. Bingley: Emerald.

Saito, M. (June 2010). Differential Item Functioning (DIF) on Gender, Time, and Country for the Pupil and Teacher Reading Tests in the SACMEQ III Research Study. Paper presented during: 2010 International Conference on Probabilistic Models for Measurement in Education, Psychology, Social Science, and Health, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Saito, M. 2007. Gender equality and education for all in Vietnam: Result from the Vietnam grade 5 survey in 2001. (in Japanese) Journal of international cooperation in education, 10 (2), pp. 129-145.

Saito, M. 2007. Construction and application of SACMEQ school resources: Portray of school systems based on the Rasch scaling technique. Journal of International Cooperation in Education, 10(1), pp. 165-182.

Saito, M. 2007. Gender equality and education for all (EFA) in Vietnam: Results from the Vietnam grade 5 survey in 2001. Paper presented at the Biennial CESA-CESHK Conference on Learning from Each Other in an Asian Century, Hong Kong (January 2007).